History

Cybera has its roots in the global movement of the 1980s to build high-speed networking to support university research.

WURCNet

The initial manifestation of this movement in Alberta was the Western Universities Research Consortium Network (WURCNet), which was created in 1994.

Netera Alliance

By 1999, the western provinces each evolved a need for their own organizations. Alberta created Netera Alliance, while other western provinces created partner network organizations. This was a period of explosive growth in the use of the Internet.

Cybera

In 2007, Netera Alliance transformed to Cybera, with a much-expanded mandate and an expert staff respected throughout the province for its leadership and expertise in not only networking, but all of the innovations that are enabled by networks and computers — together called cyberinfrastructure.

Today, Cybera protects Alberta’s economic future as the publicly funded agency in the province responsible for ensuring the development of advanced and efficient cyberinfrastructure, or e-infrastructure, a now essential foundation for innovation.